How can we build great living with wood?

This is what we set out to discover in the KäPy (End-user Approach to Development of Business Ecosystems in Wood-Based Building Sector) research project. Read our story below or click on the button to browse our results.

On a mission to find good living with wood

Wood is a great construction material. It has a major environmental role in carbon sequestration, and it also brings warmth and comfort to architecture and indoor decoration.

Ultimately, good living solutions are an issue of great importance to all of us. What do we want? What do we need? We investigate solutions to these questions. We want to assist companies, municipalities and decision-makers in their mission to strive for better living for all of us.

Here's what we are currently working on.

Finnish wood construction entails a vast amount of possibilities. Utilizing these possibilities requires the field of wood construction to work as well-oiled machine: without unnecessary friction, towards a clear goal. An efficient business ecosystem acts as such a machine and the end-users and their needs form the goal. All of us live somewhere. But what do we want from living? What do we need and hope for?

In the KäPy-project we study these needs and hopes as well as the prerequisites of an efficient business ecosystem. We want Finnish wood construction to serve the needs and hopes of us all.

​Designing wooden high-rises to meet people's needs is a benefit to everyone. Consumer needs, expectations and preferences towards living and choosing an apartment are, however, many and quite often in conflict with each other.

In her Pro Gradu -thesis Katri Palonen studied these needs and profiled consumers based on them. The study was conducted 1.12.2016 - 31.8.2017.

A number of companies, municipalities and associations act in the field of wood construction. While working and interacting in construction projects these actors form an ecosystem. Mutual rules and trust define how well the wood construction projects succeed i.e. how well the ecosystem functions.

In his Pro Gradu -thesis Juho Pöyhönen studies what are the main factors influencing the birth, efficiency and economic outcome of ecosystems. The study is currently underway and preliminary results are already available.

Research group

We are ordinary people looking for wood-based solutions towards good living.

​All emails are in the form of firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi (without dots on a:s and o:s), unless otherwise mentioned.

Ritva Toivonen

project collaborator

Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, DocentUniversity of Helsinki​​+358 40 5268412